by Bethany-Kris
It shocked him that she seemed interested in him at all.
She was friendly like that, where he simply … well, wasn’t.
“Yes?” Dino asked.
“When are you going to gain the courage to speak up?”
Dino shifted a bit in the chair, confused. “I beg your pardon?”
Karen smiled, shaking her head and going back to her work on the laptop. “Never mind, Dino.”
He was lost.
“I mean,” she continued, never looking up from the laptop again, “we can keep doing this, if it’s what you like. You coming here, me pretending like I don’t know what you’re up to.”
“Again—what?”
“Just ask, Dino,” Karen said, shooting him with a look that pinned him to the chair.
Dino laughed. “Why don’t you tell me what you want me to ask, and then we’ll go from there?”
Karen’s fingers stopping moving on the keyboard. “So you’re telling me there’s no particular reason why you show up here to check up on the place, yet you only ever really seem to stick around me, with a coffee for me, and there’s no reason for you doing that?”
Well …
Dino felt his smile growing, and he couldn’t have stopped it if he tried. Karen wasn’t a stupid woman—he’d learned that quickly, which was why instead of serving people food and drinks, she was sitting behind a desk in her very own office, with a brand new laptop to do her work on. He certainly didn’t think his interest in her was going unnoticed, but he had hoped she wouldn’t look too deep into it.
Truth was, Dino didn’t know what to do about how he felt.
Having interest and attraction was one thing.
Acting on it was something else entirely.
Dino hadn’t had a thing with a woman in years, and the last one he had ended in a way that still kept him up at night. He hadn’t loved the woman, but he felt responsible for the hell that had come down upon her simply because she had been with him.
And that, in a nutshell, had been more than enough to keep him wary of any other relationship. He couldn’t give a woman normal things—not a home, a family, and a stable life. He wasn’t of the right mindset to do those sorts of things.
“Dino?” Karen asked, bringing him from his thoughts.
He looked to her again, taking in her soft smile that always got a little bigger when she graced him with it. “Yeah?”
“Just ask.”
Dino just stared at Karen, unsure if he should act on his strange attraction, or leave it be. She didn’t know a lot about him, or his life. She didn’t have a clue about the things he was involved in, or the family he came from.
She never asked.
He never offered.
Then, Dino had to consider other things, too. Or rather, people.
Like Ben DeLuca.
A man so determined to control the people who shared his last name that he would go as far as hurting those same people just to gain what he wanted from them.
Dino was not an exception to that rule—Ben practically broke the rule in on Dino’s fucking back.
Ben would never approve of someone like Karen. A non-Italian, an outsider to their family and the lifestyle they lived, someone from a lower economic status with nothing to bring to the Outfit.
When Ben didn’t approve … horrible things happened.
That was enough to cement Dino’s next decision.
“There’s nothing to ask,” Dino said, getting up from his chair and tossing the paperwork to the desk. “Have a great evening, and let me know if you need anything or something needs looked over again.”
Karen’s smile faded slightly.
It hurt him to see her dejected expression.
So he made sure not to look back at her as he left the office.
It was for the best, he told himself.
He couldn’t start something with someone.
It would only end in pain.
Nighttime was the worst for Dino.
The darkness brought back rushes of memories he would rather forget in the form of nightmares that he couldn’t escape.
He did well in the day, for the most part, to ignore his simmering anxiety and the pressure constantly building in his chest. He put on a good act with his suits hiding scars and his sunglasses hiding tired, worn eyes.
But at night, when he was alone, there was no way to hide.
His way to combat the need to sleep was to work.
Constant movement helped. So did working out, though sometimes that worked against him and made him even more tired.
Dino could spend hours cleaning guns, or his apartment, and he’d once spent an entire night reorganizing his collection of old books, simply because he’d expended his effort on every other thing and there was nothing else to do.
He’d become a pro at ignoring sleep at night.
Sleeping in the day was slightly easier, and he was less likely to dream when he took a quick hour-long nap on an uncomfortable couch or in the driver’s seat of his car.
Sometimes, though, his days were too busy and he just couldn’t get those hour or two naps in between whatever he had to do.
Those were the worst.
One day led into two, and then three.
The longest he’d gone without sleep was four and a half days.
The night that followed had, quite literally, left him stuck in nightmares he couldn’t wake from for hours.
It was in those nightmares that he relived pain.
Beatings.
Bleeding.
Dark basements.
Damp floors.
Vomit.
Pain.
Ben DeLuca had made it his mission to mold his nephews into the creatures he wanted them to be—into perfect, unfeeling soldiers he could use—after they were left orphans with no parents. The first time it happened was on the night Ben had killed Dino’s parents, and that beating left him damn near dead, and then recovering for a week in the locked basement of one of Ben’s many shoddy, abandoned rental properties.
It didn’t stop with just one.
No, at any slight, at even the smallest of offense to Ben’s mind, a punishment would follow. If for any reason, Dino didn’t do what his uncle wanted, if he didn’t behave the way Ben deemed he should or anything of a similar sort, he would quickly find himself bleeding and healing in a place where his pleads for help couldn’t—or wouldn’t—be heard.
Sometimes Dino had fought back, but it was only after Ben’s awful attention fell more prominently to a young Theo, did he stop.
He never wanted his brother to experience the hell he did where their uncle was concerned.
Or, God forbid, their little sister Lily.
So he kept Ben’s attention on him through his later teenaged years and into his twenties. He made Ben focus on his fuckups, instead of Theo’s.
Well, as much as he could.
Sometimes he failed.
Those memories were the worst—the ones where he knew he hadn’t been good enough, or strong enough, to protect his brother.
It was really no wonder why Theo didn’t particularly like Dino.
Weakness came in many forms.
Dino had too many to name.
Perhaps that was why, when Dino was working on his third night of no sleep with little to no naps in the daytime, he found himself in a place where sleeping could very well be at the cost of his life.
Strolling into what looked to be an abandoned warehouse in the shipping district of Chicago, Dino was instantly alert at the sound of shouts—both excited and filled with pain. He paid the over-hanging, blinking lights very little attention as he followed the sounds of fighting down the long hallway. At the end, enforcers blocked the entrance, waiting for payment to move aside, though at the sight of him, they both moved anyway.
Underground fighting was a dangerous game.
There were no losers, per say, only dead bodies to dispose of.
And yet, while the violence wasn’t s
omething Dino particularly enjoyed getting involved in hands-on, he did own the warehouse, and by providing the place, he earned himself an income. The fights were invite-only, and on a need-to-know basis.
That way, those who came in were known to only a few people who regularly attended or fought. The money was damn good, both for Dino, and the winners.
Finding a spot against the wall so that he could watch the two fighters beating the hell out of one another in the makeshift ring, Dino’s anxiety began to settle. It helped when there were people watching, because that forced him to make sure no one knew he had a constant war going on in his mind.
A war that was killing him slowly.
It was only when a form settled beside him on the wall did Dino finally look away from the fight.
“How’ve you been, Ghost?” Dino asked.
Damian Rossi—a long-time friend of Dino’s younger brother—shrugged his shoulders. “Busy.”
“That’s a good thing, though.”
“Maybe.”
Damian was a man of few words, and that worked well to his favor. After all, he hadn’t gained his nickname for nothing, and the man could blend into a crowd like nobody Dino had ever met before. Involved in the Rossi faction of the Outfit, Damian worked as both an enforcer, and a personal hitman to the boss, Terrance.
Though if truth be told, Damian was any man’s hitman.
For the right price.
Dino knew when it came right down to it, Damian only did what he wanted to do where the Outfit and jobs were concerned. He certainly made it seem like he and his set of skills were up for purchase, but Dino had also known Damian to decline more often than he accepted.
“What brings you around?” Dino asked.
Damian tilted his head to the side, his gaze sweeping the floor and the people. “Checking things out, man.”
That didn’t sound right.
“Why?”
“You’re paying dues on this place, right?” Damian asked instead of answering.
Now, Dino was really getting irritated.
“Why wouldn’t I pay dues to the boss, Damian?”
Damian didn’t answer right away, simply put his back to the wall and let out a sigh. “Ben has been around Terrance a lot lately, saying shit about the Capos doing work on the side and keeping dues that are owed from the boss.”
Jesus.
Was that Ben’s new plan? Get Terrance all worked up about his men and looking into their business until he caused a fucking problem that would start up another fucking feud?
Dino was not in the mood for that mess.
“I pay my dues,” Dino said. “Pass the fucking message along, Ghost.”
Damian nodded once, then pushed off the wall. “Never thought you didn’t, Dino. Say hello to Theo for me.”
“Do it yourself the next time you see him.”
“He’s in a mood lately. By the way, how’s your sister? I heard she went to Europe a while back.”
Dino didn’t answer Damian’s question.
He was already walking away himself.
“OKAY, at first I thought maybe it was just me making shit up, but now I know you’re avoiding me.”
Dino stiffened at Karen’s accusatory words, cursing silently that he hadn’t just come when the restaurant was closed, and not a day that she was supposed to have off. He’d avoided her for two weeks by staying away from the business, but today he hadn’t been given much of a choice when he needed to go over paperwork for an order that was missing several items. He’d called ahead of time, learning that Karen was off for the day, and decided to make his way in.
But apparently she wasn’t off.
“Thought you were off today,” Dino said, never turning away from his work.
Karen scoffed. “You’re not even going to deny it, then?”
“There’s nothing to deny.”
“Right.”
He could hear the sarcasm thick in her tone, but there was something else, too.
Hurt, maybe.
Dino couldn’t dwell on it for long, or he’d find regrets in his behavior. He wasn’t the type to get caught up in his feelings—he didn’t have the time for nonsense of that sort.
“Something you need?” Dino asked.
“Actually, yes.”
“And that is what, exactly?”
“You.”
Dino damn near choked on air, surprised at her blatant statement. He turned fast to face her, only to find her smiling at him in a way that said she’d caught him somehow.
“Say that again, Karen.”
“You asked if there was something I needed.”
“Yes,” Dino said, “keep going.”
“I need you to stop avoiding me like I did something wrong. And if I did do something wrong, the very least you could do is tell me what it fucking is.”
Karen rarely swore. The first time they met, he remembered her using a cuss, and thinking it was probably a regular thing, except it wasn’t. That had been nothing more than a fluke. In all the time Dino had spent with her since she started working for him, he could count on one hand the amount of cusses she let slip past her pretty lips.
He didn’t even think the F-word was in her vocabulary.
How mistaken he was …
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Dino settled on saying.
He couldn’t give her much more.
“But you are avoiding me,” she pressed.
God.
She was not going to let this go.
“I’m avoiding an awkward situation,” Dino replied, adding, “which you’re not helping with at the moment.”
“Because I wanted you to take me on a date?”
Dino blinked. “What?”
Karen looked as though she had taken all she could for the day. Throwing her hands up, she let out an exhausted noise and spun on her heel to leave.
Dino couldn’t let her go like that. In a blink, he was going after her, catching up with her in the hallway. He grabbed her arm, spinning her around to face him.
“Wait a second,” he said.
Karen’s scowl cut him deep and she jerked out of his hold. “Don’t manhandle me, Dino. I’m not a pet for you to play with, you know?”
Dino dropped her arm, taking one giant step back. “Sorry.”
“Listen, if you’re not interested in me, then that’s fine. But the signals you are throwing out are a little mixed, all right? One second you’re watching me like you can’t get enough, the next you’re turning into a block of ice. So I took a risk and asked you, just so I knew. I don’t mind rejection, asshole, but you don’t need to make it more painful than it already is. If you’re not interested, then say so. Don’t be a dick about it, too.”
Well, then.
Dino wasn’t quite sure what to say.
“I’m … very interested,” he managed to utter.
It took a lot for him to say that.
If he wanted a girl to climb in bed with, he could go find one at a club, and he wouldn’t even need to waste his breath learning her name before he was done with her.
Karen wasn’t quite the same.
He actually found himself genuinely curious about her—who she was, where she came from, and why she painted her fingernails black when she wore the brightest colors everywhere else. He wasn’t looking to get his dick wet—though he’d be lying if he said his cock wasn’t interested in Karen—but rather, he wanted to know her.
That couldn’t end well.
He hadn’t done this sort of thing before.
Karen shifted in her heels, watching him out of the corner of her eyes. “Oh?”
Dino nodded. “I’m not very good at this, I guess.”
That was an understatement.
He didn’t get involved with people at all.
“It’s just a date,” she said softly.
“That’s not so bad,” Dino replied, “but I’m not sure I can give you much beyond that, Karen.”
“Did I ask for m
ore?”
“No.”
“Then don’t put words in my mouth,” Karen said, smirking just a bit. “You’re a little strange, Dino DeLuca.”
He didn’t miss how she said his last name like she had no fucking clue how dangerous that surname was—as if she didn’t possibly know the ties his name had to organized crime and a hellish past that was still very much alive and well in Chicago.
She didn’t have a clue.
That, or she didn’t care.
“Ask me,” Karen said.
Dino chuckled. “My last date was years ago.”
Ten years, to be exact.
He’d watched his date be buried a week later.
Ben hadn’t approved.
Terrance never knew what really happened to his daughter.
Didn’t Dino have a good reason to be wary?
“Ask me,” she repeated.
Dino shouldn’t—he knew better.
He still did it.
It had been a long time since he’d done something that he wanted to do.
“Drinks or coffee?” he asked.
Karen smiled, warm and wide. “Let’s get drinks, and if goes well …”
“What?”
“We might end up with coffee, too.”
Damn.
Dino had learned things about Karen over the two months since she had started working at his restaurant—she was only a year younger than him, and she’d moved from California to Chicago for school, decided she’d liked it, and then stayed after graduation. But those were safe things; the surface of a tale, and not the whole story.
It was only after her third beer in a quiet bar did he start to learn the good stuff.
“My mother and father separated when I was thirteen,” Karen said, working on peeling the label off the beer bottle. “I didn’t spend much time with my dad, but he thought he had enough say to tell me Chicago was a terrible choice and I would be stupid to leave home.”
“Yet here you are,” Dino said.
